Women in the Communist Party of Spain were highly active, the most visible figure in the movement being Dolores Ibárruri, who joined in its early years. The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera pushed the group underground, where they had to meet clandestinely around their public face, the football club Oriente FC.
The birth of the Second Republic in 1931 saw a new era in Spain, where women were welcomed en masse into the public sphere, receiving voting rights, the ability to divorce and increased access to education. The first elections in 1931 saw the PCE kept out of Congress, though communist sympathizer Margarita Nelken y Mansbergen did win a seat representing the PSOE. She went on to win re-election in 1933, and PCE won a single seat in Congress.
In 1935 PCE embraced the Popular Front line, seeking to unite all anti-fascist forces under a single umbrella. Dolores Ibárruri's prominence grew in this period, as she increasingly became the face of the party, winning a seat in the 1936 elections. PCE's strategy towards women in the Second Republic was largely to address their needs primarily as a tool to grow membership. The 1934 Asturian Miners' Strike saw women's profile grow larger. With women's parallel participation in violence, the male PCE leadership tried to discourage women from the more militant aspects of the party.
During the Spanish Civil War, Spanish and international communist women served on the front lines and on the home front, rising to leadership positions within militia forces. However, male communist leaders tended want them away from the front lines and tried to make clear internationally that female combatants should not come to Spain. Behind Nationalist lines, Communist affiliated women were executed or sent to prison. They were also raped, forced to drink castor oil, had their heads shaved and forced to march through towns as punishment.
The post Civil War period of Francoist Spain saw many Communist women go into exile, while early in this period the PCE maintained its status as the most important leftist political organization. Women were involved behind the scenes, organizing covert armed resistance, bombing Guardia Civil positions, robbing banks and attacking offices of Falanage.
Prelude to the Second Republic (1800–1922)
Following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, members of Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) began to discuss what the role of communism should be in their own party, with the topic raised in PSOE's 1919 Congress. The following year, the youth wing of the party created the Communist Party of Spain () (PCE) but they not recognized as a PSOE affiliate. Partido Comunista Obrero Español were founded in 1921 by Bolshevik sympathizers within PSOE, but they too were rejected by PSOE.
Dolores Ibárruri was one of the few women active in leadership in the Communist Party of Spain. Joining during the 1920s, she found herself elected to the Central Committee by 1930. Two years later, she was the head of its Women's Commission.
+ Secretaries-General of the Communist Party of Spain Year NameTime in office 1921 Antonio García Quejido 1921–1923 1923 César Rodríguez González 1923–1925 1925 José Bullejos 1925–1932 1932 José Díaz 1932–1942 1942 Dolores Ibárruri 1942–1960
Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–1930)
The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera forced PCE to go underground, and engage in clandestine activities with their public face being Oriente FC, a football club. Because the organization was in hiding, they lacked a cohesive, shareable platform in this period and the organization was beset by internal conflicts. The most radical elements in the party congregated in Juventud Comunista, also representing the most organized branch of the party.
Second Spanish Republic (1931–1937)
One of the most important things about the Second Republic for women is it allowed them to formally enter the public sphere en masse. The period also saw a number of rights available to women for the first time. This included the right to vote, divorce and access to higher education.
Elections in the Second Republic The Spanish monarchy ended in 1931. Following this and the end of the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the Second Republic was formed. The Second Republic had three elections before being replaced by the Franco dictatorship. These elections were held in 1931, 1933 and 1936. Election Popular vote Seats Leader Outcome Votes % # 1931 0.8 #21 José Bullejos 1933 1.9 #14 José Díaz Ramos 1936 2.5 #13
June 1931 Elections
PCE was on the margins of Spanish politics until 1931, when the Second Republic was founded. Its membership prior to that was only in the low thousands. Its small size made it of little interest to the broader Communist movement in Europe.
Three women would win seats in Spain's national congress, the Cortes in the 1931 elections, Spain's Cortes were Clara Campoamor Rodríguez, Victoria Kent Siano and Margarita Nelken y Mansbergen. Nelken, who officially joined the party in 1935, ran in the 1931 elections as a PSOE affiliated candidate.Preston, Paul. (2002). Doves of war. Four women of Spain. Harper Collins. London. p. 318Preston, Paul. (2002). Doves of war. Four women of Spain. Harper Collins. London. p.364
1933 Elections
For the first time, for the 1933 elections, women could vote in the national elections.
Socialist feminist and communist supporter Margarita Nelken y Mansbergen faced problems in the Cortes. Her mother was French and her father was a German Jew. As a consequence, before she was allowed to sit in 1931, Nelken had to go through special bureaucratic procedures to insure she was a naturalized Spanish citizen. Her political interests were looked down upon by her male peers, including Prime Minister Manuel Azaña. Her feminist beliefs worried and threatened her male colleagues in the Cortes. Despite this, she was reelected in 1933, and found herself subject to constant attacks in the media as she proved a constant irritant to male party members who sometimes resorted to racist attacks in the Cortes to shut her down. Still, she persevered, winning election 1931, 1933 and 1936. Disillusionment with PSOE led her to change membership to the Communist Party in 1937.
February 1936 elections
By 1935 Dolores Ibárruri, who had attended the International Lenin School in Moscow, had risen to a leading role in the party. PCE, through Unified Socialist Youth () (JSU) and Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia () (PSUC), waged a campaign to try to bring all the leftist parties under their own umbrella. This angered PSOE, trade unions, anarchists and other socialists. Consequently, the idea was abandoned and PCE instead worked on creating joint committees for collective action with these other organizations. Dolores Ibárruri rose to prominence as the leader of PCE in a large part because she was the only member of PCE who had the charisma and public visibility to appeal to the broader mass of Spanish leftists. One of the methods that PCE used to try to gain more power in 1935 was to align with Republican parties ahead of the 1936 elections. This was viewed as a method of being able to further control inside the Republic, and co-opt the leftist movements. Prior to this, they had rejected such alliances as too bourgeois.
Ibárruri campaigned for a deputy in the Cortes ahead of the 1936 elections as a member of the Popular Front. During her campaign in Asturias, she campaigned before groups of Socialists, Communists, Anti-fascists and Republicans. She used her experiences to improve her oratory skills that would serve her later during the Civil War by observing other speakers who managed to successfully engage audiences. Ibárruri won, and entered the Cortes as a member of the Popular Front, in the Communist minority. Unlike some of their peers on the left, she and other Communists advocated citizens taking up arms in preparation for what they saw as the coming conflict. During important debates about women in the Second Republic, Dolores Ibárruri was often silent. She was not involved in the debate about women's suffrage and she condemned abortion. The women's rights issues she spoke about included the right to work outside the home, pay parity, and the need for childcare.
Nelken returned from exile to run for election.Preston, Paul. (2002). Doves of war. Four women of Spain. Harper Collins. London. pp.341-342 Nelken, also a militant communist and feminist, was much less accepted than Dolores Ibárruri precisely because she did not challenge the patriarchy of the day. Consequently, Ibárruri's leadership is remembered more fondly in Spain than Nelken's.
Political activity One of the biggest challenges faced by leftist women was Marxism prioritized the issue of class equality over gender issues. For anarchists, syndicalists, communist and socialist women, this often resulted in male leadership deprioritizing women's needs and locking women out of participation and governance as their needs did not directly relate to the class struggle. Some leftist men, both in political and labor organizations, also resented women entering the workforce, viewing their lower wages as contributing to employers lowering wages among male workers.
Despite their own differences in ideology, communist, Republican, communist and socialist women would come together for discussions about the political issues of the day. They also worked to mobilize women en masse to protest issues they felt were important. One such mobilization occurred in 1934, when the Republican government considered mobilizing its reserve forces military action in Morocco. Within hours of the news hitting the streets, Communist, Republican and Socialist women had organized a women's march to protest the proposed action in Madrid. Many women were arrested, taken to the police headquarters and later released.
Party politics During the Second Republic, Partido Comunista de España was the primary Communist political organization in Spain. Communists began to recognize the importance of women during the Second Republic, and started to actively seek female members to broader their female based in 1932. To this further this goal, the first Communist women's organization, Committee of Women against War and Fascism in Spain, was created as a way of trying to attract women to Communist connected unions in 1933. Membership for women in PCE's Asturias section in 1932 was 330, but it grew By 1937, it had increased to 1,800 women.
Women in Partido Comunista de España faced sexism on a regular basis, which prevent them from rising up the ranks in leadership. They were denied the ability to be fully indoctrinated by keeping them out of Communist ideological training classes. At the same time, men insisted women were not capable of leadership because they were not educated in these principals. The sexism these leftist women faced was similar to their counterparts on the right, who were locked out of activities of the Catholic Church for exactly the same reason.
During the Austrian miners action, the government of the Second Republic responded by arresting thousands of miners and closing down their workers centers. Women rose up to support striking and imprisoned miners by advocating for their release and taking jobs to support their families. PCE male leadership strove to find roles for women that better comported with what they saw as more acceptable for their gender and better fit into the new, more conservative legal framework being created by the Second Republic. This included changing the name of the Committee for Women against War and Fascism to Pro-Working Class Children Committee. PCE's goal and the actual result was to discourage women's active participation in labor protests.